Making Sense of Budgets

Session Leader

Duration

Aims

This Workshop aims to improve your understanding and application of the frameworks used for practical budgetary control.

Objectives

By the end of the Workshop you will be equipped with the knowledge, understanding and skills to enable you to better manage budgets through to improved budgetary planning and control, resulting in more effective day to day resource management.

Specifically, the intended outcomes are to:

Appreciate the strategic context of budgeting,

Understand the nature and purpose of budgeting systems,

Be able to differentiate between full economic/resource costs and cash-based,
costs and understand the implications for budget preparation and management,

Be able to link staff behaviour to budgeting systems influences,

Understand the rationale of differing approaches to budget preparation, particularly the incremental, zero base and priority base budgeting approaches,

Be able to identify the causes of variances from budget,

Be better able to measure performance.

Who will benefit?

Information Covered

Why Bother with Budgeting?

Looking at Numbers: Cash, Commitment, Resource, fEC Budgets,

People, Budgets & Behaviour,

Approaches to Building Budgets,

Making Sense of Variances,

Managing & Measuring Budgetary Performance through PIs,

Review, Evaluation and Next Steps.

The Workshop comprises ‘chalk & talk’, practical activities, and delegate inter-action.